Ebby Offord Archives - Chicago Reader

Viola, in men's clothing (a white shirt, dark trousers) stands left, looking intently into the face of Olivia, who wears a black knit top, a deep pink dress with bows at the sleeves, and a long strand of deep pink beads. The audience at the Lincoln Park Conservatory and an evergreen with purple lights are visible in the background

The food of love

by Kerry Reid December 7, 2022December 7, 2022

Shakespeare was queering the narrative before that term even existed. So it makes sense that Midsommer Flight’s seventh annual production of Twelfth Night at the Lincoln Park Conservatory goes all-in on genderqueer playfulness this year—especially with queerness under attack from so many quarters. Bex Ehrmann’s staging amid the purple-and-lavender Nutcracker-themed decorations in the conservatory’s Show […]

Four young people in flowing colorful robes surround Bottom, who is playing a guitar and wearing donkey ears.

Theater Review

Al fresco dreams

by Marissa Oberlander July 20, 2022July 20, 2022

On its ten-year anniversary and return from a COVID-19 hiatus, Midsommer Flight is restaging A Midsummer Night’s Dream,the play that started it all in 2012. On the night I attended, the crowd, close to 100 people by my estimation and incredibly engaged, was compelling proof that free summer Shakespeare continues to bring communities together around […]

A soldier in tan camouflage and a red beret stands behind a woman in an African dress, holding her arms. Another soldier seated on the right grabs her face.

Theater Review

‘They’re safer with me than at home’

by Amanda Finn February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined can be hard to watch at times. Set in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Nottage’s Mama Nadi (Tekeisha Yelton-Hunter) runs a pool hall where the women don’t just serve beer. Mama Nadi’s brothel is a place of refuge for the men on either side of the civil war […]

Theater Review

Hamlet for Halloween

by Albert Williams October 27, 2021October 27, 2021

Invictus Theatre’s intimate, bare-bones modern-dress staging of Hamlet is storefront Shakespeare at its best. The company’s stated aim is to “promote a better understanding . . . of heightened language . . . to express the breadth of the human condition,” and this dynamic, clearly spoken non-Equity production delivers. Director Charles Askenaizer guides the ensemble […]